headed by a choice vanguard from pandemonium, might have mingled in the
scene unnoticed."

A dramatic scene had occurred at the adoption of the platform. When the
first resolution was read, Joshua E. Giddings, an old-time abolitionist
of the extreme type, moved as an amendment to incorporate the words
from the Declaration of Independence which announce the right of all
men to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The hostility to
this amendment was not so much owing to an objection to the phrase, as
to its being introduced upon the motion of so extreme a partisan as
Giddings. The new party was made up of men of various old parties, and
it was important that the moderate democrats should not be antagonized
by the extreme abolitionists. The motion was lost by a decided vote,
and the old man, almost broken-hearted, left the hall amid the
protestations of his associates.

There then came to his rescue a young man, about thirty-six years of
age, who was then not widely known, but who since has more than once
decidedly influenced republican conventions at a critical stage of the
proceedings. It was George William Curtis. When the second resolution
was under consideration he presented the amendment of Giddings in a
form slightly modified. He then urged it in an impassioned speech, and
by his torrent of eloquence carried the enthusiasm of the convention
with him. "I have to ask this convention," he concluded, "whether they
are prepared to go upon the record before the country as voting down
the words of the Declaration of Independence.... I rise simply to ask
gentlemen to think well before, upon the free prairies of the West, in
the summer of 1860, they dare to wince and quail before the assertion
of the men of Philadelphia in 1776--before they dare to shrink from
repeating the words that these great men enunciated."